RetroIndy: Ghosts in the archives

With the help of our friends at hauntedplaces.org, we have come up with a list of some of the most haunted locations in Indiana.
Chris Sims/IndyStar

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This Irvington cottage was a stop on a cross country murder and crime spree by H.H. Holmes, America's first serial killer. The property is believed to be the site where the serial killer dismembered and burned a young boy, Howard Pitzel in 1894.(Photo: Michelle Pemberton)Buy Photo

Stories of unexplained ghostly sounds, spirits and bumps in the night were a frequent topic in the local newspapers around the turn of the 20th century. Sometimes the clearer heads prevailed and discovered the sources of the "haunting," while most just packed up and left hoping the next tenant would confront the phantoms.

Irvington’s electric ghost

For several weeks in 1893, a hired man had seen luminous apparitions in an Irvington house. The lights flashed by windows leaped down stairways and dashed from room to room. One night, the man sprang from a window in terror and declared a ghost had “jumped right on him with both feet without hurting anything but his feelings.”

Desperate to sell the home, the owner sat on a fence and reasoned the ghosts appeared at the windows every nine minutes. The Irvington electric car, radiating strong light, passed the house every nine minutes. The ghosts ceased their hauntings at midnight — exactly when the last car passed the house.

The governor’s ghostly grunts

In 1894, Gov. Claude Matthews found his plantation-style home in Vermillion County to be haunted by nightly groans and grunts. Neighbors swore it was the ghost of a former tenant who died. His casket was placed in a corner while a photographer was at work. The casket overturned and the corpse rolled out on the floor, forever haunting the home. But once the governor erected a fence around the home to prevent the hogs from creeping under the house at night — the grunting disappeared.

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Is this the face of a phantom? Were hogs the cause for ghastly noises at an Indiana governor's home?(Photo: Kelly Wilknson/IndyStar)

A wartime ghost in the elm tree

On East Michigan Street beyond Pogue’s Run sat a mammoth elm known as the “hangman’s elm”. During the Civil War, the body of a man was found hanging from the tree. When soldiers climbed the tree to cut him down, they found a concealed opening. They decided to place the body in the opening. But when they dropped him in, they heard no sound of him hitting the bottom. Many years later, neighbors claimed the swaying of the branches produced mournful sounds. Children’s balls would disappear when striking the tree and when the wind would blow, the hole would suck down everything swirling around it into it.

The Holmes house ghost

The Victorian cottage in the 5800 block of Julian Avenue in Irvington has been deemed “haunted” since the 1890s murder of 10-year-old Howard Pitzel. The notorious serial killer, Dr. H.H. Holmes killed the boy in the home, cut him up and burned the remains in the stove, leaving only bits of bone and buttons. The first tenant in the house reported scrapings, only to discover they were tree branches hitting the home. His worst ghostly enemies were neighborhood children who threw tacks at the windows. Since then, residents say they heard doors slamming, lights flickering, glass shattering and male-sounding voices.

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Dr. H.H. Holmes in August 1895.(Photo: Indianapolis News)

Apparition in a mine

IN 1899, William Shippy, night watchman for the Buckeye mine in Linton, claimed a ghost, “dressed in white with outstretched arms and eyes glistened like diamonds” appeared before him. When Shippy fled, the ghost hurled stones that smelled of sulfur. A posse of men was organized to catch the ghost, but that wasn’t enough to keep Mr. Shippy from resigning his position.

Ghost of murdered girl

In 1911, the evening shift telephone girls of the Cumberland Telephone and Telegraph Company in Evansville believed the shadowy figure that haunted their building was that of Josie Gray, a former bookkeeper who was murdered, her lifeless body locked a vault. A ghostlike figure “flitted across the windows” and caused a great commotion after 2 a.m.